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The awarding of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Peace to education advocate Malala Yousafzai should stand as an example for young people the world over — including in Rochester, where the Pakistani teenager’s faith in education is too little emulated.

Yousafzai — at 17, the youngest person to receive a Nobel Prize of any kind — has become a global ambassador for education, especially for girls. She has taken on not only poverty and cultural ideologies hostile to girls attending school, but death threats and the Taliban. A vocal proponent of education in her native Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province since age 11, Yousafzai was repeatedly threatened as her profile grew through interviews and a blog for the BBC. In October 2012, she was struck in the head by a would-be assassin’s bullet on her school bus.

That she survived and continues her campaign ought to inspire every young person who faces odds of any kind in pursuing a diploma. It should also highlight the essential — absolutely irreplaceable — role education plays as the best ticket out of poverty or other stifling circumstances.

That’s a lesson that needs reinforcing in Rochester, where education is too often discounted or disregarded by those who could most benefit from it: families staggering under off-the-scale poverty and unemployment rates.

Even on the first day of this new school year — an event the Malalas of the world would greet with celebratory participation — fewer than 84 percent of city school students attended class. Persistent absenteeism is one reason Rochester consistently ranks as the worst performing among the state’s big-city school districts.

None of which is to dismiss the very real challenges many city students face — inside the classroom and, especially out. There is widespread agreement the very culture surrounding education in Rochester needs to radically change.

That’s where a new initiative being spearheaded by the Rochester Area Community Foundation comes in. Working with the district, a foundation-formed task force (representing parents, police, teachers, students, justice professionals, local government and many other disciplines) will work to rewrite the student code of conduct and, more importantly, reset the very climate of city schools education.

Meantime, students and families can do more to take advantage of the city’s educational offerings. Malala Yousafzai would have given almost anything for such an opportunity. In fact, she almost did.